The mission of the Contra Costa Resource Conservation District (RCD) is to provide an organized means for land managers and local community members to play a prominent role in carrying out voluntary, cooperative conservation programs that promote the sustainable and productive use of natural resources.

The Alameda County Resource Conservation District provides technical and educational services for natural resource conservation and agriculture enhancement. Collaborates with private landowners, local, state, and federal agencies and other organizations to develop and implement various conservation and agricultural strategies.

For better and worse, the upper reach of the Pilarcitos watershed on the Peninsula was dammed to supply water to San Francisco in the 1860s. The surrounding land has been protected and kept off-limits to the public ever since, allowing rare species to thrive here. That includes the marbled murrelet, which nests only in old-growth conifers, such as Douglas fir. But the dam and other impacts also leave less water in the creek for oceangoing steelhead. Now, a diverse group of stakeholders has come together to chart a brighter future for the fish and the creek.

A visit to remnant native grasslands in Richmond or diverse oak woodlands in eastern Alameda County gives a taste of our region’s native habitats. But few of us are aware of an important element that helped shape those habitats: the regimes of burning, pruning, and digging carried out over centuries by the East Bay’s indigenous inhabitants, some of whom still carry on those traditions today.